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ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD

Alfred North Whitehead, OM (February 15, 1861 Ramsgate, Kent, England– December 30, 1947 Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) was an English mathematician who became an American philosopher. He wrote on algebra, logic, foundations of mathematics, philosophy of science, physics, metaphysics, and education. With Bertrand Russell, he coauthored the epochal Principia Mathematica.

Contents

Life

The standard biography is mainly by his Harvard student Victor Lowe; see Lowe (1985) and Lowe and Schneewind (1990). A comprehensive appraisal of Whitehead's work is difficult because unlike Bertrand Russell, Whitehead left no Nachlass; his family carried out his instructions that all of his papers be destroyed after his death. There is also no critical edition of Whitehead's writings.

It is convenient to divide Whitehead's career into three phases:

  • 1880–1910. He studied, taught, and wrote mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, spending the 1890s writing his (1898) and the 1900s collaborating with Russell on the first edition of Principia Mathematica. On Whitehead the mathematician and logician, see Grattan-Guinness (2000, 2002), and Quine's chapter in Schilpp (1941), reprinted in Quine (1995). Whitehead left Cambridge just as the first volume of the Principia appeared, to protest the dismissal of a Trinity College colleague because of an adulterous affair.
  • 1910–24. This period was mostly spent at University College London and Imperial College London, where he taught and wrote on physics, the philosophy of science, and the theory and practice of education. In physics, Whitehead is best known for a little-known rival to Einstein's general relativity. Whitehead's theory is discredited because its predicted variability of the gravitational constant G disagrees with experimental findings. See [1], or Will (1993).
  • 1924–47. He taught philosophy at Harvard University, 1924-37, a subject he had not previously taught. His Harvard position that had been partly endowed by a Boston businessman who admired Whitehead's work.

Whitehead married Evelyn Wade in 1891; they had a daughter and two sons. One son died in action while serving in the Royal Air Force during World War I. Meanwhile, Russell spent much of 1918 in prison because of his pacifist activities. After the war, Russell and Whitehead seldom interacted, and Whitehead contributed nothing to the 1925 second edition of Principia Mathematica.

Process and Reality

Whitehead's metaphysical views began to emerge in his 1925 Science and the Modern World, also an important study in the history of ideas, and the role of science and mathematics in the rise of Western civilization.

Whitehead was asked to give the 1927 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. These were published in 1929 as Process and Reality, the book that founded process philosophy, a major contribution to modern metaphysics. Process philosophy has a fair following around the world except, ironically, in the United Kingdom. Able exponents of process philosophy include Charles Hartshorne and Nicholas Rescher. The Big Bang cosmology that became canonical about 20 years after Whitehead's death, whereby the universe began a finite time ago in a very simple state and has subsequently grown ever more complex, is a scientific consensus that is compatible with process metaphysics.

Process and Reality is famous for its defense of theism, although Whitehead's God differs essentially from the revealed God of Abrahamic religion. Process philosophy gave rise to process theology, thanks to Charles Hartshorne, John B. Cobb, Jr, and David Ray Griffin. Some Christians and Jews find process theology a fruitful way of understanding God and the universe. Just as the entire universe is in constant flow and change, God, as source of the universe, is viewed as growing and changing. Whitehead's rejection of mind-body dualism is similar to elements in faith traditions such as Buddhism.

A signal technical feature of Process and Reality is its philosophical use of mereological and topological notions. Bowman Clarke argued in the 1980s that the mereotopology of Process and Reality was seriously flawed, and showed how it could be repaired. Simons (1987) contains an accessible review of Clarke's work.

Philosophical beliefs

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One of the most overlooked quotes attributed to Alfred Whitehead, is the following: 1953

"There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil."

Here is an insight into the philosophical error of logic dealing with Truth.

Whitehead's political views were similar to libertarianism without the label. He wrote: "Now the intercourse between individuals and between social groups takes one of two forms, force or persuasion. Commerce is the great example of intercourse by way of persuasion. War, slavery, and governmental compulsion exemplify the reign of force."

Even though Whitehead spent much of his life thinking deeply about abstruse mathemathematical and metaphysical questions, he had wise and witty opinions about a vast range of human endeavour. These opinions pepper the many essays and speeches he gave on various topics between 1915 and his death, reprinted in his (1917, 1925a, 1927, 1929a, 1929b, 1933, 1938). Most Sunday afternoons when they were in Cambridge, the Whiteheads hosted an open house to which all Harvard students were welcome, and during which talk flowed freely. Some of the obiter dicta Whitehead spoke on these occasions were recorded by Lucien Price, a Boston journalist, who published them in Price (1954). That book also includes a remarkable picture of Whitehead the aged sage holding court.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

See also

Bibliography

Works by Whitehead

  • 1898. A Treatise on Universal Algebra with Applications. Cambridge Uni. Press. 1960 reprint, Hafner.
  • 1911. headmap.org An Introduction to Mathematics. Oxford Univ. Press. 1990 paperback, ISBN 0-19-500211-3. Vol. 56 of the Great Books of the Western World series.
  • 1917. The Organization of Thought Educational and Scientific. Lippincott.
  • 1920. The Concept of Nature. Cambridge Uni. Press. 2004 paperback, Prometheus Books, ISBN 1-59102-214-2. Being the 1919 Tarner Lectures delivered at Trinity College.
  • 1922. The Principle of Relativity with Applications to Physical Science. Cambridge Uni. Press.
  • 1925 (1910-13), with Bertrand Russell. Principia Mathematica, in 3 vols. Cambridge Uni. Press. Vol. 1 to *56 is available as a CUP paperback.
  • 1925a. Science and the Modern World. 1997 paperback, Free Press (Simon & Schuster), ISBN 0-684-83639-4. Vol. 55 of the Great Books of the Western World series.
  • 1925b (1919). An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge. Cambridge Uni. Press.
  • 1926. Religion in the Making. 1974, New American Library. 1996, with introduction by Judith A. Jones, Fordham Univ. Press.
  • 1927. Symbolism, Its Meaning and Effect. The 1927 Barbour-Page Lectures, given at the University of Virginia. 1985 paperback, Fordham University Press.
  • 1929. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. 1979 corrected edition, edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, Free Press.
  • 1929a. The Aims of Education and Other Essays. 1985 paperback, Free Press, ISBN 0-02-935180-4.
  • 1929b. Function of Reason. 1971 paperback, Beacon Press, ISBN 0-8070-1573-3.
  • 1933. Adventures of Ideas. 1967 paperback, Free Press, ISBN 0-02-935170-7.
  • 1934. Nature and Life. University of Chicago Press.
  • 1938. Modes of Thought. 1968 paperback, Free Press, ISBN 0-02-935210-X.
  • 1947. Essays in Science and Philosophy. Runes, Dagobert, ed. Philosophical Library.
  • 1947. The Wit and Wisdom of Whitehead. Beacon Press.
  • 1951. "Mathematics and the Good" in Schilpp, P. A., ed., 1951. The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, 2nd. ed. New York, Tudor Publishing Company: 666-81. Also printed in:
    • in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, 1941, P. A. Schilpp, Ed.;
    • in Science & Philosophy; Philosophical Library, 1948.
  • 1953. A. N. Whitead: An Anthology. Northrop, F.S.C., and Gross, M.W., eds. Cambridge Univ. Press.
  • Price, Lucien, 1954. Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, with Introduction by Sir Ross David. Reprinted 1977, Greenwood Press Reprint, ISBN 0-8371-9341-9, and 2001 with Forward by Caldwell Titcomb, David R. Godine Publisher, ISBN 1-56792-129-9.

Works about Whitehead and his thought

  • Browning, Douglas and Myers, William T., eds., 1998. Philosophers of Process. Fordham Univ Press. ISBN 0-8232-1879-1, contains some primary texts including:
    • "Critique of Scientific Materialism"
    • "Process"
    • "Fact and Form"
    • "Objects and Subjects"
    • "The Grouping of Occasions"
  • Ivor Grattan-Guinness, 2000. The Search for Mathematical Roots 1870-1940. Princeton Uni. Press.
  • ------, 2002, "Algebras, Projective Geometry, Mathematical Logic, and Constructing the World: Intersections in the Philosophy of Mathematics of A. N. Whitehead," Historia Mathematica 29: 427-62. Many references.
  • Charles Hartshorne, 1972. Whitehead's Philosophy: Selected Essays, 1935-1970. University of Nebraska Press
  • Kneebone, G., 2001, (1963). Mathematical Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics. Dover reprint: ISBN 0-486-41712-3. The final chapter is a lucid introduction to some of the ideas in Whitehead (1919, 1925b, 1929).
  • LeClerc, Ivor, ed., 1961. The Relevance of Whitehead. Allen & Unwin.
  • Lowe, Victor, 1962. Understanding Whitehead. Johns Hopkins Uni. Press.
  • ------, 1985. A. N. Whitehead: The Man and His Work, Vol. 1. Johns Hopkins U. Press. The biography.
  • Lowe and Schneewind, J. B., 1990. A. N. Whitehead: The Man and His Work, Vol. 2. Johns Hopkins U. Press.
  • Richard Milton Martin, 1974. Whitehead's Categorial Scheme and Other Essays. Martinus Nijhoff.
  • Mays, Wolfgang, 1959. The Philosophy of Whitehead. Allen & Unwin.
  • ------, 1977. Whitehead's Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics: An Introduction to his Thought. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
  • Nobo, Jorge L., 1986. Whitehead's Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity. SUNY Press.
  • Willard Quine, 1941, "Whitehead and the rise of modern logic" in Schilpp (1941). Reprinted in his 1995 Selected Logic Papers. Harvard Uni. Press.
  • Nicholas Rescher, 1995. Process Metaphysics. SUNY Press.
  • ------, 2001. Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues. Univ. of Pittsburg Press.
  • Schilpp, Paul A., ed., 1941. The Philosophy of A. N. Whitehead (The Library of Living Philosophers). New York: Tudor.
  • Simons, Peter, 1987. Parts. Oxford Uni. Press.
  • Will, Clifford, 1993. Theory and Experiment in Gravitational Physics. Cambridge University Press.

External links

Persondata
NAME Whitehead, Alfred North
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Whitehead, A. N.
SHORT DESCRIPTION British mathematician and American philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH February 15, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Ramsgate, Kent, UK
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 1947
PLACE OF DEATH Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA